I WENT INTO THE CHURCH ITSELF. THERE I met another black-suited, white-gloved man—a deacon presumably. I asked him for directions to the nearest rest room. There, after allowing a suitable interval, I ducked out through a back door that opened on to another parking lot. Hurrying over to Madison, I half walked, half jogged down the hill, knowing that eventually my bone spurs would exact a terrible price for such rash folly.
As I approached the appointed place, I wondered if the whole thing might be some kind of trick or if Ron Peters really was behind the mysterious message delivered by Knuckles Russell. If the news was that important, surely Ron would have come to convey it himself, wouldn’t he? Why trust a street-toughened gang member or even ex-member to carry missives back and forth between us? The closer I got to the deli in the swale at the bottom of the hill, the dumber I felt and the more tempted I was to call a halt and go back the way I’d come, but then I spotted Ron Peters’s K-car with its distinctive wheelchair carrier perched on top. It was parked on the street directly in front of the deli.
Inside, I found Ron Peters and Knuckles Russell seated in the far corner. Ron, alert and keeping watch, had positioned himself facing out. Knuckles, with his disheveled clothing straightened and minus the baseball cap, sat with his face averted and shoulders hunched, nursing a cup of coffee. Ron waved and motioned for me to join them. I stopped by the counter and picked up my own cup of coffee along the way.
“What’s going on?” I asked Peters as I sat down at the table. “I don’t have much time. I don’t want to miss the funeral.”
“I know you two have met before,” Ron Peters said, “but I don’t believe you’ve been properly introduced. Beau, this is Ezra Russell. Ezra, this is Detective Beaumont.”
I held out my hand. Ezra “Knuckles” Russell looked at it for a long moment before taking it. He nodded and shook hands but said nothing.
“What seems to be the problem?” I asked.
“Go on,” Ron Peters urged. “Tell him.”
“My friend’s dead,” Knuckles blurted, “an’ I can’t even go to the funeral ’cause if I do, they’ll smoke me too.”
“Who’ll kill you?” I asked.
He raised his eyes and looked at me, unveiled distrust written on his face. “You maybe? And maybe this dude too? Ben says for us not to come back, no matter what. He says this be…this is our one chance to get away. But this One-Time here”—he motioned to Ron—“he says I gotta help. That otherwise Ben’s killer walks.”
I knew Captain Freeman had warned me to keep quiet, but if Harmon Weston already knew about Sam Irwin’s death, why shouldn’t I?
“Word’s out on the street that Ben Weston’s killer’s dead,” I told them.
Ron’s jaw dropped in surprise. “Really?”
“Who?” Knuckles Russell demanded.
“His name’s Sam Irwin.”
For a moment or two after I spoke it was quiet at our table as the news soaked in. “You mean Sam Irwin from down in Motor Pool?” Ron asked.
I nodded. “One and the same,” I said.
Maybe word about traitors in our midst was news to people like Ron Peters and J.P. Beaumont, but clearly Sam Irwin’s name was no surprise to Knuckles Russell.
“So?” He spat in disgust. “You think that motherfucker’s the only one? All he knows is cars and knives and cuttin’ people. Sam Irwin’s not the brains. He ain’t runnin’ the show.”
“Who is then?”
Knuckles shrugged. “I dunno.”
“I’ve heard rumors that Ben Weston was in on it,” I said tentatively, just to see what kind of reaction the comment would elicit. The result was far more explosive than I expected. Ezra Russell half rose to his feet until his face was barely inches from mine, his features contorted into a look of sheer hatred.
“Don’t you dis’ my friend, One-Time. You say that again, and I’ll smoke you sure!”
I took Knuckles Russell at his word. No disrespect for his dead friend Ben Weston would be tolerated.
“Tell me about Ben,” I said, backing off, modifying my tone. “What made him tick?”
Unexpectedly, Ezra Russell’s eyes clouded with tears. He wiped them away angrily with the back of his hand. “Ben Weston was the onliest real friend I ever had,” he said despairingly. “The only one.” He broke off, his voice choked with raw emotion.
The whole time, I had been wondering how Ron Peters had managed to overcome Knuckles’s entirely understandable distrust and antipathy toward cops, how he had talked him into coming to talk to us. Now I knew the answer. Something about Ben Weston had engendered a powerful loyalty in the boy.
“How did that happen?” I asked. “How did you two become friends?”
He shook his head. “I dunno. Not exactly. I didn’t want it. Ben shows up at my door one mornin’ and says he wants to talk to me. I say I don’t wanna talk to no cops. He says we talk anyway, he says he knows my uncle from church and my mama and Mrs. Davis, my fourth grade teacher. He says he knows I be…he knows I’m smart and do I want to be somebody’s smart homeboy and do their dirty work and get myself killed or do I want to have a life?
“I say to him you can’t come in here. My friends’ll say I’m turnin’ on ’em, and Ben says that’s right, that’s the way it’s gonna look. He says he’s puttin’ the word out on the street that me and him is good buddies, so if I doan wanna get my ass killed, I better be. And so he come almost every night and we talk. He talks ’bout my mama and my uncle and how family’s the most important thing of all. And he talks ’bout how bein’ somebody’s homeboy’s no better’an bein’ their slave.
“So word gets out that me an’ him hang out together. The BGDs all say I’m spyin’ for him. Ben laughs and says that’s right, that’s the way it looks. So what’m I gonna do now? He axs me if I know Harriet Tubman. He says she run the Underground Railroad back in the old days. He says he’s startin’ one of his own—a railroad to out, away from gangs and drugs. He axs me if I want to be on that train or be dead. I say that’s not much choice and he and says, boy, that’s the only choice you gots. And so I took it.”
Knuckles’s words had tumbled out in an almost breathless rush. Now he stopped and waited.
“Where did the railroad take you?” I asked.
“Ellensburg. Ben Weston worked some kind of deal to get me an’ this other kid in over at Central. We both be…we’re both in this special English class. He helped me sell my car for this quarter and he was gonna get me student aid for the next one. All I gotta do is promise not to come ’round here, not to get involved. He says my family can’t even know ’bout what I’m doin’ ’cause they might tell the wrong people. He says he ain’t tellin’ anybody, not even his woman, neither.
“And so I’m over there workin’ my ass off. I doan read no papers, doan see no TV. So when this One-Time here wakes me up at six o’clock in the mornin’, I think maybe some of my ex-friends’re lookin’ for me to cause trouble. Instead, he tells me ’bout Ben and all those poor little kids.”
“You’ve been in Ellensburg the whole time?”
He nodded.
“What about your briefcase?” I asked. “The one you got from your mother for your birthday?”
His eyes narrowed. “What about it? How’d you know ’bout that?”
“It was found on what used to be your doorstep the morning after the murders. Some of your former associates from the streets turned it over to us. The clothes inside—red sweats—were soaked with blood.”
“I be a BGD,” he announced defiantly. “I don’ wear red sweats. Ever!”
As soon as he said it, the frame-up was so obvious I felt stupid for falling for it even momentarily. The color red and BGD do not go together.
“Okay.” I nodded. “I understand that, but somebody wanted us to think you did it. They went to a lot of trouble to make it look as though you had something to do with what happened to the Westons. Maybe they figured that if we didn’t get you for the murder, maybe some of your ex-friends would take care of you just on general principles. So you tell me, who did it, Ezra? Do you have any idea?”
“You already know one name,” he said. “Sam Irwin. If I say the others, I be breakin’ my word to the Black Gangster Disciples and to Ben Weston both.”
“As far as the BGD are concerned, you’re a marked man anyway. They already told me that. And after talking to them, I can understand why Ben wanted you to stay out of it, to keep your mouth shut. We’ll try not to use your word alone to build our case, Ezra. There’ll be other evidence as well. In fact, there probably already is. Did Ron tell you about Junior, Ben’s son, that somebody tried to kill him again last night?”
“Yes,” he said with downcast eyes. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Don’t you owe Junior Weston the same kind of chance his father gave you? If we don’t stop these guys, they may try again, and the next time they may succeed. I can’t promise that you won’t be called on to testify against whatever police officers are behind this operation, because you probably will be, but I can say you’ll be given the best protection we have to offer.”
He raised his eyes and met mine, but he said nothing. “I’ll ask you again. What happened to your briefcase, Ezra?”
“One-Time took it.”
“A cop took it? Which one? When?”
“Name’s Deddens.”
“Gary Deddens? From Patrol?” I remembered Deddens from Ben Weston’s house. He had been one of the officers left guarding the crime scene, the guy who, along with me, had gone chasing after my would-be assassin. Talk about leaving the wolf to guard the henhouse. No wonder Ben Weston’s Day-Timer had disappeared into thin air.
Ezra Russell nodded. “That’s the one.”
“How did he get it?”
“He’s the bagman. We pay him to let us know where the gang enforcement’s gonna be. Me? I’m the treasurer of the Black Gangster Disciples. I take the money to Deddens in that briefcase my mama gave me for my birthday. Deddens takes the money and then he says he likes the case and that he’s gonna keep that too. And all the time he’s sayin’ this, ol’ Sam Irwin’s standin’ off to one side with his knife, sharpenin’ it. So I say fine, you keep it. But when people ax me about it, I say someone stole it.”
“Did Ben Weston know this was going on? Did he know there were cops on the take?”
“Ben knows.”
“Why didn’t he do something about it?”
“Don’t you understand nothin’?” Knuckles Russell demanded. “He was. He was gettin’ the evidence. That’s why those mothers smoked him. That’s why he be dead.”
“You’ve already named two—Deddens and Irwin. Are there others?”
“Ben says there be at least one more and when he finds him, maybe that’ll be the end of it.”
“Did he mention a name, give you any kind of a clue?”
“Somebody in the gang unit,” Knuckles Russell said softly. “He says somebody who all the time knows what’s goin’ down.”
Somebody in the gang unit? Who could that be? I glanced at Ron, who was studying his watch. “I’ve got an idea,” he said, “It’s almost time, so let’s go to the funeral. I don’t know if Gary Deddens plans to attend or not, but my understanding is that as many people from Patrol as possible are coming as a group. Since Ben worked both places, I expect CCI will be there in force as well. If Deddens shows up, let’s cut him out of the herd in public, turn it into a media event. Once we do that, all we have to do is watch for a reaction from somebody in the gang unit.”
His suggestion made sense. I suspected that Sam Irwin had been killed as some kind of damage-control measure, in another attempt at pinning the Weston murders on somebody else so business in the protection racket could continue as usual. If we made a big show of picking up one of the remaining conspirators, we would be serving public notice to the contrary.
I stood up. “You’re right. We’d better get going.”
“You’d do that?” Knuckles Russell asked dubiously. “Just on my word?”
I looked Ezra Russell straight in the eye. “Ezra,” I told him, “Ben Weston was your friend. I believe you want us to find the people who killed him every bit as much as we do. Maybe your word alone isn’t enough for an actual arrest, but that, combined with other things we’ve learned, certainly makes it possible for us to ask questions. Just asking may get the reaction we need.”
“Can I come along?”
“You bet. Let’s do it.”
We all piled into Ron’s Reliant. The push of a button sent his folded chair disappearing into the specially designed rooftop wheelchair carrying case that resembles a giant clam shell. We drove back up to the church and parked in an open handicapped zone directly in front of the hearse-filled courtyard.
An overflow crowd had spilled out into the courtyard, where loudspeakers blared a full-voiced choir singing an absolutely mind-blowing version of “Amazing Grace.” In my experience most funerals feature a single soloist, but from the sound of it, the Mount Zion Baptist Church had done far better than that. If the choir was already singing, however, there was no time to stand outside and savor it. I left Knuckles with Ron Peters and tried worming my way into the church.
The cross-shaped sanctuary was jammed to the gills. Five white coffins, three large and two small, were ranged across the front of the church, creating a telling spectacle of loss that brought an Adam’s apple-size lump to my throat. In the very front pew, the top of Junior Weston’s head was barely visible where he sat, statue still, with Emma Jackson on one side of him and his grandfather on the other.
On the far side of the church, a red-robed choir faced across the altar and the middle, forward-facing pews. Opposite them sat a massed group of uniformed police officers, only half of which were from Seattle itself. The rest were from law enforcement departments all over the state of Washington. Maybe some of the African-American officers had set foot inside the Mount Zion Baptist Church before, but if they were anything like me, most of the Caucasians hadn’t and again like me, they probably felt like foreigners, drawn there only by the unifying tragedy of those five senseless deaths.
As I started down the aisle, a deacon moved forward to assist me, but I had caught sight of Sue Danielson seated near the front in one of the middle pews. Obviously, the empty space next to her was reserved for me. With whispered thanks to the deacon, I made my way up the aisle just as the Reverend Homer Walters stepped to the pulpit. I slipped into the crowded pew beside Sue Danielson. She scowled at me but said nothing.
“This is the day that the Lord has made,” he said. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” A chorus of amens echoed throughout the sanctuary.
The opening prayer was long and moving. Then, one at a time and with heartfelt measured words, Reverend Walters eulogized each of the slain victims in turn. He spoke of Ben Weston’s pride in being a police officer, of Shiree Weston’s work with the church credit union, of Bonnie’s interest in becoming a teacher, of Adam’s hope to follow in his mother’s footsteps and become a doctor, and of Doug Weston’s sometimes impish gift for storytelling. Finally, though, Homer Walters pounced on the meat and gristle of his message.
“I will not stand here before you today and tell you that what has happened is God’s will,” he declared. “I will not say that God must have had an urgent need for this man and woman and these three little children and that’s the reason He took them home. No, I will not say that. They have been literally cut down in their primes without so much as a chance to live and grow and laugh on this good earth where God put them in the first place.
“Maybe you came here today expecting me to give you comforting words in the face of this senseless tragedy, a tragedy not only for the African-American community but for the community at large. Maybe you expect me to tell you that this too shall pass. Don’t you believe it. I want you to get mad and stay that way.
“Take a good look at these children’s unfinished lives and Ben and Shiree Weston’s unfinished business. Are we just going to wring our hands and say that’s too bad, or are we going to do something about it? And I’m not just talking about catching the man who did this. Today I’ve heard rumors that there’s a chance the killer is already dead, that he died last night of a drug overdose. So be it. Let him stand before his Maker and explain himself. I have more faith in the Lord’s justice than I do in ours.”
This was followed by another answering chorus of amens. Across the center aisle I caught sight of a dry-eyed Molly Lindstrom sitting with her son Greg. She didn’t see me. She was listening intently to Reverend Walters, hanging on his every word.
“As a minister of the Lord it is my job to write sermons Sunday after Sunday, and some say I do it better than most. But don’t you believe that, either, because when I write one of those real tub-thumping sermons, the kind that makes the rafters up there ring, you can bet the sermon’s better than anything I could have written myself. I always figure the Lord Almighty must have a hand in those. And that’s the way it was last January when I wrote the first sermon of the New Year. I was inspired to challenge the men and women of this church, and especially the men of this congregation, to do something about the young men in our community, and in other communities as well, who have fallen afoul of themselves, of drugs, of gangs, and of the law.
“By no means are African-American young people the only ones involved in gangs, but I told the men in this congregation that they had a responsibility to the ones who are, that they needed to go out in the world and do something about that particular problem on an individual basis. We can sit here inside these four walls and pray about it, and we need to do that. But we need to do something more. Each of us needs to get off our backside and go out into the streets and do what we can to help.
“That’s what the sermon said. Ben Weston heard that challenge and he set himself the task of meeting it. He went after boys he knew in gangs who had some connection to this church. I can tell you that before he died he found four of them. He pulled them out of where they were and he put them on another track. Do you hear me? I’m saying he put them on another track entirely. He brought four young men out of the wilderness and led them into the Promised Land.”
Another louder murmur of amens trickled through the congregation. I glanced at the choir. In the front row sat an attractive young woman with a mane of pencil-thin braids. She was listening with rapt attention, and I wondered if she wasn’t the undercover cop Tony Freeman had tried to conceal from us as he escorted her out of his office.
Walters continued. “I believe Ben Weston is dead because he was doing the Lord’s work, because what he was doing rocked those gangs. They don’t want to lose their members’ loyalty, but Ben Weston figured out a way to take them away, to set them free. And so today, I want to issue another challenge to those of us who are left. And I’m not talking just to the members of the Mount Zion Baptist Church, either. I’m talking to all you people out there who came here today because Ben Weston and his family died, because Adam Jackson died.
“Instead of just grieving over this terrible loss, I want each and every one of us to do what we can, starting right where Ben Weston left off. Maybe we can’t save every one of those boys, because, quite frankly, some of them don’t want to be saved. And I’m not talking about throwing money at the problem for more social workers or more jails or more drug treatment centers, either. I’m saying that if each of us goes out and takes one boy or one girl by the hand, takes the time to talk to them and lead them in another direction, we can make a difference. If we do, Ben and Shiree Weston, Bonnie and Doug Weston, and little Adam Jackson will not have died in vain.
“After this service, we will be going to the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Renton. Afterward, there will be a reception here, sponsored by the ladies of the church. I hope as many of you as possible will join us both at the cemetery and here later.
“And now, Lord, in closing, we ask Your blessing upon this day, upon the grieving family members, and upon this community, that we can somehow find a way to turn this tragedy into a blessing. Amen.”
A small army of men, none of them police officers, rose as one and moved forward to collect the coffins one by one. As they did so, the strains of “Amazing Grace” once more caught fire in the church. This time, it wasn’t just the choir singing, either. The whole congregation was, their voices raised in affirmation. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one shedding tears and singing at the same time.
It was that kind of funeral.